


i fall in love whenever we meet

by thelilacfield



Series: there is no world where i am not yours [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Beach Holidays, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Skinny Dipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25768231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: He’s selfishly pleased to have Wanda to himself. He doesn’t have to measure his reactions to her when she isn’t looking, the way he stares at her haloed in sunlight when her skirts flutter in the ocean breeze. The sunlight spills through her hair like fire, and whenever she turns and smiles at him like it’s the first time she’s ever seen him all the breath rushes out of him, and he finds himself giddy.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: there is no world where i am not yours [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859725
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	i fall in love whenever we meet

**A/N:** Day seven of AU-gust! One week in and still going strong! And you can read more about the challenge and see what else is coming **[here](https://augustwritingchallenge.tumblr.com/post/621653119656493056/the-list-of-prompts-was-completed-one-prompt-per#notes)**!

Please leave a comment if you enjoy this fic! I'm on tumblr and twitter **@ mximoffromanoff** if anyone wants to chat!

* * *

**From: Wanda**

**We'll be at the houses in a few hours. Can't wait to see you <3**

**To: Wanda**

**Me neither. It's been too long <3**

"Vision!" He looks up from his phone when Helen calls from the car, waving him over. He sets his phone on the table and goes to help her unload their hired convertible, dragging suitcases into the beach house and starting to unpack his belongings. He has to find _something_ to do until Wanda and her mother and brother arrive.

Folding clothes away into the room he'll occupy for two weeks of sand and sun, he lets his thoughts drift away to memories of Wanda. It's been three years since they were last both at the beach together, and her family cut their holiday short when Pietro got stung by a jellyfish and had an allergic reaction. Despite the constant back and forth chatter over texts, he's missed the sound of her voice.

Ten years since they met. He can hardly believe it. He remembers the little girl with her dark hair in pigtails who came running up to him to ask him to help her build a sandcastle in a competition with her brother. Pietro pouted and said she'd cheated, but he helped her stud her construction with shells and make a moat that they filled with real water, running back and forth to the sea together while their parents watched and laughed. Helen bonded so quickly with Django and Marya that summer, the three of them sharing barbeques and bottles of wine while Wanda dragged Vision along behind her on adventures with Pietro.

He remembers her in shades of gold on the beach. Catching crabs in rock pools and splashing each other in the sea. Her finger curled around his, promising to be friends forever and ever. Three summers in a row that they spent together, telling stories beneath the stars and talking about how one day they'd have neighbouring houses with white picket fences. The fairytales of children that stopped when she didn't come back the year they were ten.

He had to find out from Helen what had happened. That Wanda's father had very suddenly passed away, leaving his wife and children devastated. They went to the funeral, Vision in his very first suit, but when he saw Wanda crying he got tongue-tied and didn't know what to say. After that, they didn't speak for almost two years.

Then he finally got Facebook, under all of Helen's rules about being careful online. Within two days, she'd sent him a friend request. And they started to talk again. When they saw each other at the beach when they were thirteen, she ran into his arms and he held her close. She was shaking in his arms, and they walked on the beach for a long silence until she broke and talked about her father. He shared in her grief for that week, sitting out until long after dark letting her talk. It was when they left after that summer that he was sure he wanted to be friends with her for as long as she wanted him.

His head whips up when he hears a car outside, and he looks out of the window to see Marya in the window of the car pulling up to their neighbouring house. And he runs out of the door like an excited child, looking for the familiar dark head climbing out of the car.

The first thing he sees is that Wanda has dyed her hair red since he last saw her. Then she's beaming and running into his arms, and he buries his face in the curve of her neck and breathes her in. Three years since he last saw her in person, finally ending with her hand around the back of his neck and her feet off the ground with how tightly he's holding her.

"Why didn't you tell me you dyed your hair?!" he asks when they finally part, and she laughs and tucks a strand of red hair back behind her ear. "It suits you."

"I wanted to surprise you," she says sweetly. "Three years is a long time."

"Believe me, I know," he says, and she smiles. Then they're hugging again, ignoring the world around them, lost in each other.

It isn't until he's back in the beach house and listening to Helen chatter about what she wants to make for dinner that he allows himself to acknowledge that seeing photos of Wanda on Facebook over the last few years has not done her justice. And with her new red hair, he's forced to acknowledge that he has an enormous crush on his best friend.

* * *

The week stretches out golden and sunlit in front of him, back with Wanda. Pietro has fallen out of their trio over the years, though Vision sometimes sees him going out for runs on the beach early in the morning, a dark silhouette against the pale sand. He's learned to drive, gotten a girlfriend, and he often takes the car into the nearby towns rather than spend the day soaking up the sun like his mother and sister.

But he's selfishly pleased to have Wanda to himself. He doesn't have to measure his reactions to her when she isn't looking, the way he stares at her haloed in sunlight when her skirts flutter in the ocean breeze. The sunlight spills through her hair like fire, and whenever she turns and smiles at him like it's the first time she's ever seen him all the breath rushes out of him, and he finds himself giddy. He's like a child again, running after her. The endless chase beneath the turn of the sun.

They sit apart from their families at one of their barbecues, Helen and Marya drinking wine over their plates and Pietro inside, Skyping his girlfriend. Wanda rolls her eyes and says, "He's obsessed with her. I don't even like her that much. She's kinda a bitch."

"That's mean," Vision says, and she laughs, her fingers tangled around the neck of a bottle of cider. He's had two himself, and it's making everything fuzzy, everything bright. The moonlight is rippling on the surface of the ocean and Wanda's hair is swaying around her face in the breeze and he feels tugged towards her, a magnet in his stomach.

"As his little sister, I'm practically obliged to hate his girlfriends," she says, and he shakes his head. "Besides, he's already threatened to give the shovel talk to the first guy I bring home. I think I'm allowed to bitch about his girlfriend."

"You're not seeing anyone?" he asks, carefully hiding his own desperate curiosity, and she shakes her head.

"No one at school really interests me," she says. "I'd rather focus on getting into college next year."

"Where do you want to end up going?"

"Anywhere in New York," she says reverently. "I know everyone wants to move to New York, I'm such a cliché. But they have great Psych programmes, and when you're from the stupid slow town that I am a big city is the dream."

"I'm looking at New York too," he says, and she _beams_. "Maybe we'll end up going to the same college."

"Even if we don't, we'll be in the same city!" she says, and her eyes are bright and her smile wide, and his head is swimming with cider and her closeness. He can smell the salt on her skin, and if he was a braver person he'd probably lean forward and kiss her, regardless of their mothers watching. "We'll finally get to stop being long-distance friends."

"You think we'll still be friends at college?" he asks.

"Of course we will, silly!" she exclaims, nudging at him with her feet. "We promised to be friends forever, remember? I don't forget my pinky promises."

He blinks at her for a moment, then a smile crosses his face. When she shivers, he holds out an arm and she curls up to him, the clink of another bottle cap falling to the ground the only sound to disturb their peace while they drink and watch the waves embrace the shore.

* * *

He's trying very hard to concentrate on reading. Every summer he brings a stack of books with him, determined to get ahead on reading for school. He has his sunglasses pulled down against the afternoon glare and a heavy classic open in his lap.

But he's thoroughly distracted by Wanda sunbathing next to him. Her hair tied up, glinting red in the sunlight, her head pillowed on her arms, and the long expanse of her back back. He wants to curve his hand over her skin, match his thumbs to the dimples at the small of her back. Her shorts and T-shirt are folded neatly next to her, and some helpless part of him hopes she'll never get fully dressed again.

When she straightens up and stretches her arms above her head he stares hard at the pages of his book. He is not looking at her. Even respectfully. It's only when she taps him on the shoulder and smiles her devastating smile over the words, "It's hot. Come swim with me," that he sets down his book and follows her to the water. The moth to the flame.

The water is freezing, raising goosebumps on his legs the moment it swirls over his bare feet. But she goes running straight in to her shoulders, beaming, and turns back to shout, "Come on, Vizh! You'll get used to it if you do it all at once!"

He follows her. God help him, he'd follow her anywhere. There could be jellyfish or crabs or even sharks in the water and he'd still go with her. He'd follow her down into the shadowy depths. She's wrapped around his life so tightly that he could never stop himself.

Maybe this isn't just some schoolboy crush. When she takes his hand it's like lightning through him, and when she smiles it imprints itself onto the back of his eyes. Her eyes turn his whole world to their particular shade of green, and every glimpse of a flash of her pale skin as she flits through the waves short-circuits him. He's only one man. He was not built to cope with everything Wanda Maximoff is.

Cold water splashing in his face brings him out of his reverie, and she giggles, pulling him with her. "We should come back tonight," she says. "When it's late and there's no one else here."

"Why would we do that?" he asks, and a smirk silks across her face.

"So we can skinny dip," she says blithely, and he splutters, a blush instantly flooding his face. "It's not a big deal. We did it as kids, remember?"

"Well, it's...that sort of thing is okay when you're eight years old," he says. "We're seventeen now, remember?"

"You can't come to the beach as a dumb teenager and not go skinny-dipping," she says. "It's practically a right of passage."

He doesn't remember ever actually agreeing. But after Helen has drifted to bed, giggly from sharing a bottle of wine with Marya, he sneaks out of the house with a towel and his own bottle of wine. Some floral, fruity flavour that he hopes won't taste as dry as Helen's usual tipples. Wanda is waiting for him on the beach, blue dress against her golden tan, her face sprinkled with new freckles. He wants to trace her freckles, match them to the stars in the sky, and when she takes his hand and pulls him across the sand he trips over his own feet following her.

There's another family still on the beach, children laughing and a dog barking, and she pulls him on, murmuring, "Don't worry. I know a private spot."

Around the ends of a dune is another smaller sub-section of the beach, and Wanda turns and smiles at him. She drops her bag and unfurls a towel, setting out snacks. "I thought it would be cute to have a picnic," she says, and he just holds out the bottle of wine. "Nice. Give me that."

She unscrews the cap and takes a long drink before she passes it back to him. He wonders if she thinks as much as he does about their lips wrapped around the neck of the same bottle, if she watches the motion of his throat when he swallows. The wine creeps up on his slowly, syrupy and sweet, until he's swimming in a haze of stars and sea and sand and _her_.

It ends up being him who goes to the water first. Before he can think about it too hard, he steps out of his clothes and leaves them tangled on the beach, burying himself in the water. It's even colder at night, but the silk of the waves against his skin feels like a lover's touch, and he turns back to look at Wanda. To watch her slowly stand up, her hair rippling in the starlight, and the sound of her dress hitting the sand writes itself permanently on his memory.

He's not sure who moves first. The wine and the stars and the look on her face has rendered him incapable of much logical thought. But one moment he's counting the freckles on her face, her eyelashes spiky with seawater and the stars reflected in her eyes, and the next they're kissing. The next she's in his arms, warm skin slick against his, and he has a hand in her hair and he's finding out that his hand fits perfectly over the curve at the small of her back.

When they break apart, she licks her lips and all the blood in his body rushes downwards. He has to step further into the depths of the sea and quietly say, "I'm sorry, I...I should've asked if that was okay."

"I kissed you back," she says, tucking damp hair back behind her ear. "Vizh...why do you think I asked you to come meet me out here, at night, and get naked with me?"

"Um...it's fun?"

She laughs, the sound bell-like in the night, and swims towards him, cupping her hand to his cheek. "I _like_ you, Vizh. There's a reason no one at school interests me. There's a reason I started looking at colleges in New York after my mom told me your mom told her you didn't want to go to school out of state."

"You _like_ me?" he squeaks, and she nods.

When he kisses her again, she tastes like wine and salt and summer.

She tastes like a dream coming true.


End file.
